Juhana wrote on Mit, 22 Dez 1999:
>
>What do you guys there don't understand? What evil feature?
>
>The idea of the active tool is simple, useful and transparent to rest of
>you who don't want to hear about it and think it is something evil.
>
>If an alternative is to go and buy $$$ wacom tablet, I would say that *that*
>is an evil feature of GIMP.
>
>I'm starting to hate this attitude of a few GIMP developers who throw bricks
>under the wheels just because they don't care if the GUI is user friendly
>or not. But remember: not everyone is working like you, don't be selfwish.
>
It's a sad thing that this discussion is divided in two sides and it seems to
me that both sides are not willing to cross lines ...
Hey, we are all grown ups (aren't we?) and there are some rules to discuss
new ideas. Don't say: that one isn't heard of before, so it must be evil. Or:
That is not the way I do it, so it isn't good. Or at least: I know my idea is
superious why don't you see that.
I think we all care about gimp (and it's developers) to be friendly to it's
users. We are not like Micro$hit, sitting above the clouds and saying: Our
software is without errors, the user is the error ...
New ideas have to be discussed with an open mind. And the one that has brought
the new idea to the discussion has to convince!
Please say something like:
- This idea has some drawbacks to me. And then _describe_ this drawbacks.
- This idea is good because it help me to do ...
>
>Because I have some older GIMP which did come with stable Debian GNU/Linux,
>I would like to know is the situation really as bad in the latest version.
>Please do following and check it what happens:
> 1. open a new image and paint various colors to it;
> 2. open a second image, choose pencil tool;
> 3. change color: go to the first image and select a new color with
> the color picker;
> 4. go back to second image, select pencil and draw;
> 5. repeat steps 3 and 4.
>
>What exactly happens? How many clicks? Does color picker pop-up a dialog?
>Do you have to drop the dialog window off the mouse pointer explicitly?
>
No, the situation is not as bad in 1.1. (BTW: 1.0.2 is really outdated, cause
it relies on the old gtk+-1.0. The latest gimp-1.0.4 is transverted to
gtk+-1.2, but no new features ...)
As stated before you just use the 'ctrl' key to change to colour picker.
And that you have to explicitly click to position your mouse pointer isn't
gimp's fault. You have configured your window manager to let you manually
place all new windows. I don't like this feature and prefer "smart placement"
(but if it is your choice, I think you can configure the WM to place the colour
picker window without explizitly clicking. fvwm for example can set the
placing policy for each window explicitly -- if you wish)
Just to discuss the active tool once more:
it is a good idea, but needs some refinement, I think. (See my previous posting)
If you only want it for pap (picture as palette) you can solve this problem
without active tool. But to think about it, to be consistent there has to be
more than just an active tool. It has to be acompanied by colour, brush, etc.
better known as a context. And then you can't solve your problem with this.
1. make context a collection of some settings (colour, brush, fill as it is now
plus tool, toolsettings ...)
and (this comes from the discussion about active tool) make it selectable
what you want to include into the context. So you can have a large pencil
with a specific setting but changing the colour at will.
How can it be done?
"Make context" can popup (by default or only if you ask) a dialog where you
can select all the settings you wanna include, just as you do when changing
a fontstyle of a larger textblock (you then don't want to change all
attributes but just say the family). Have a global setting where you can
say what attributes are enabled for a context by default and have a
possibility to change it afterwards.
With this you can easyly and cheaply have the ability to completly change
your tools and don't have to buy an intuous
(though this is a very nice tool ;-))
and with shortcuts all will be happe, I think
2. What about a setting like "use lokal context" / "use global context"? So you
can change the context for a special image not affecting all the others and
simply swap to using the global one.
3. last idea: something like a context stack. Then you can have a command
"switch to last used context" and also tigerts point of switching a tool for
just a second is blown away ;-)))
>Thanks (for nothing?),
Oh, don't be filled with bitterness. Besides the "I am right and you are not"
this was a good debate! Don't you have new insights???
And don't even think about going to the photoshop people ;-) The best that can
happen to you is: Oh yes, this feature is already there. Don't think they will
discuss like we do.
There is an error in a pagemaker companion (AdobeTable) that they know of (it
is not able to make table that have ä look right) but are not willing to
fix it ...
Merry Christmas to all
"Glory to God in the highest
and on earth peace
to those on whom his favor rests."
Luke 2:14
Uwe Koloska
--
mailto:koloska@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://rcswww.urz.tu-dresden.de/~koloska/
-- --
right now the web page is in german only
but this will change as time goes by ;-)
